Pacific Electric, A Much-Welcomed Addition To L.A. Clubland

For its grand opening on March 19, Pacific Electric, a brand-spanking-new venue owned and operated by tvg Hospitality opened its steel-toned doors to music industry, friends, family and fans in a industrial neighborhood located in central Los Angeles. The well-appointed 25,000-square-foot multi-faceted space, six years in the making, is something of an emporium and a welcome addition to L.A. clubland, which on this night featured local rock stars, Dawes, who performed a phenomenal set before a sold-out crowd filling the 750-cap two-tiered performance space..

Exploring the “campus,” as one staffer put it, slowly reveals a wondrous space of earthly delights. This includes an outdoor courtyard with a garden, seating and a delicious Indian food courtesy of Badmaash. There’s a circular bar with an art deco motif and inventive mixology, a more-recently opened and separate bar, Mitsi, on the second floor with an outdoor balcony, as well as large and well thought-out dressing rooms, complete with washer & dryer, piano, showers and more. The entire space’s total unofficial capacity could comfortably fit an estimated 1,500 or more.

Nestled in an industrial warehouse area between the LA River, Chinatown, train tracks and LA Historic Park (which has hosted music festivals including FYF Fest, Hard Summer, Beach Goth, Primavera Sound, Head In The Clouds, LA Pride in the Park), it’s relatively easy to access by car with four freeways nearby: the 10, 110, 5 and 101 (information many Angelenos will take great comfort in) and not far from downtown L.A and Dodger Stadium. The neighborhood dates back to 1878 and America’s “Gilded Age,” which brought about the industrial revolution, and unlike most of, L.A., still feels that way. The area was initially developed by French-American warehouseman Edouard Naud which gave the area the name “Naud Junction.”

Over the last decade, the development in the small pocket of an area has come to include fine dining (Majordomo), a phenomenal bar (Apothéke), art studios, film sets, design and other creative companies and was once the headquarters of Paradigm Music Agency. In fact, much esteemed music agent Tom Windish, who founded and ran The Windish Agency, which is now part of THE * TEAM, owned the space that eventually became Pacific Electric.

“We had 760 people through the doors last night,” says Ben Lovett co-founder and managing partner of tvg Hospitality. “At no point did it feel like this team that had never operated together before. There was nothing about it that felt like it was anything other than years of experience operating a business. There was no panic behind the scenes, no one sprinting down the corridor being like, ‘What are we going to do about this?’ I am grateful because I actually got to just enjoy it and see everyone on the field doing a great job.”

If anyone needed to enjoy themselves, it’s Lovett. When we speak the day after Pacific Electric’s opening, he has finally returned to his home and family in New York City after having gone through an extraordinary whirlwind.

“It’s been crazy,” Lovett says, “because it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever had an album launch in the same month as launching a venue and they take being all in, so I’m looking forward to charging the batteries a little bit.”

Perhaps more than just a little bit. The month before the opening on Feb. 20, the phenomenal Mumford & Sons, Grammy winners. arena-level artists and the group Lovett co-founded and plays keyboards in, released their sixth studio album, Prizefighter, (produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner with collaborations from Hozier, Chris Stapleton, Gracie Abrams, and Gigi Perez). Dropping a new album takes loads of time, setting-up, promotion, rehearsals, interviews, etc. This for the Mumfords included a Saturday Night Live performance and an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. Perhaps the only thing more time-consuming than promoting a new album is opening a new venue that in the final stretch often goes 24/7 right up until the doors open and then some.

“I was very much on site at 4 a.m. the last few days with the inspectors,” Lovitt says, “reviewing everything and you have to be knowledgeable about it, because otherwise you’re just a figurehead.” Far more than a figurehead, Lovett in describing the six-year journey in opening Pacific Electric him and his team took on major construciton projects like “seismic foundation work” and “redoing the strength of the roof so it could receive mechanical equipment.”  

To some it may seem like church and state to be both a venue owner/developer/business person and an artist, but it’s exactly Lovett’s musician’s vantage point that’s allowed tvg to create unique spaces that delight both artists and fans alike.

“A lot of people from the music industry who toured backstage area last night were like, “Artists will play here who have never experienced this before, with showers in the dressing rooms, generous space for sofas and a wardrobe to hang up your clothes, an actual dining table in your dressing room, these are proper spaces,” Lovitt says. “More like a hotel room. if you’re an artist and you’re on tour. maybe you haven’t been home for three or four weeks and you walk up to this venue and when you go into your dressing room, there’s a washer and dryer and there’s a proper shower, there’s a piano, you’re like, ‘Okay, wow, I feel like I’m being treated like a human again.’”

Though Lovett is the Mumford-infused face of tvg, he gives all credit to the tvg squad he’s assembled. “The team is touching all of it with me,” he says. ‘This is far  from one man band. it takes, it takes a real army of expertise,

That team includes Stacey Levine, the Senior GM, Allyson Borunda, marketing manager, Heather Martin, Finance Controller, Brian Tairney, Programming Manager, Aron Mandelbaum, Production Manager, Leticia Bautista, Special Events Manager and Peter Ross, Bar Manager

Levine’s venue experiences is impressive formerly working as GM of The Palladium, The Wiltern which and the Theater at the Ace Theater. She also serves on the board of trustees for the Hollywood Arts Council.

“We wanted it to feel warm and welcoming the moment you walk in — great sound, good drinks, and a team that genuinely cares,” Levine said. “For artists, we focused on making things easy: simple load-ins, comfortable backstage spaces, and dressing rooms that actually feel good to be in. We’ve put a lot of thought into every decision, from the diverse lineup of music, club nights, and community programming to the little details that make a night out feel special.”

There’s loads of special joy-sparking extras, that include a rotation of art in the green rooms, which now include Christian Letts, painter and guitarist for Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. When you order a Long Island Iced Tea it includes ingredients like “yuzu and Angostura.” BADMAASH brings it’s delectable comestibles to Pacific Electric via a “Secret Indian Food Window,” located at the back of the garden; there’s a VIP viewing area stage left for agents, managers and artists teams; LED lights on the balcony and on the ornate proscenium with individual lit candle-like votives, original graffiti that pre-dated Pacific Electric, dedicated coat check and merch spaces, the bar area covered in concert posters from previous L.A. shows.

Much of the building’s high-concept has to do with Lovett’s philosophical take on public spaces, which he believes has a higher purpose especially so in these fraught times with so much social tension and isolation.

“I’m really interested in this concept of third space that’s really important to our species as, as human beings,” He says. “It’s the third space where you spend your time beyond where you live and where you work. Obviously, a lot of your time is spent between home and your work environment. But then what are you doing with the rest of your time? For me, especially growing up in the pre- and post-social media age, I’m at the age where I saw and experienced what it felt like for people to go out and not have their phones glued to them. These spaces are more important than ever. And it can be anything from the local community center, the pub, the church, the synagogue, whatever it might be, it’s where people are like, ‘this time of week I’m going out, I’m not working and I’m not at home and I’m going to go and spend time with my community”. So what Pacific Electric does is give people more space is to do that. It doesn’t always have to be a musical experience. I think what we’ll see is people will gather in that garden just to have a catch up and, that’s what partly why I love hospitality. It provides those places for people to analog, and actually just physically, be with each other and talk and laugh and cry and meet. If we lose that as a society, I’m not sure. I don’t, I don’t know where that leaves us.”

To that end, Lovett explains that the garden with Badmaash and the bar Mitsi are open to the public without having to buy a ticket to the show and where attendees can co-mingle with people in the neighborhood. It’s this kind of innovative multitiered and multirevenue stream approach that should help Pacific Electric compete in a fairly saturated live music market, albeit one that is spread out over relatively vast distances.

Some of Pacific Electric’s competitors in the Los Angeles venue market with similar capacities include the 700-capacity Echoplex, the 771-cap El Rey Theater and the 625-capacity Teragram Ballroom and the 800-cap Glass House in Orange County. Helping to bring in acts is Pacific Electric’s open building model allowing for promoters of every stripe to promote shows.

Pacific Electric, which was named after the company that made L.A.’s famed red streetcars, is not in any way Lovett’s first rodeo. The acclaimed musician is seemingly a serial entrepreneur: He co-founded Communion, which grew out of a club night at Notting Hill Arts Club in 2006. That entity would come to include a promotions company, an independent record label and a publishing entity. In 2016, Lovett opened London’s Omeara, a 320-capacity venue located near London Bridge, Following the success of Omeara, tvg opened a second London venue, Lafayette in King’s Cross and then The Social in The West End.

tvg, with Lovett, jumped the pond in 2010 and would eventually open tvg’s first U.S. venue, the 8,000-cap Orion Amphitheater in Huntsville, Alabama, in May of 2022. The company then partnered with and enhanced the 500-cap Saturn, a live music venue, bar and coffee shop outside Birmingham, Alabama in 2023. The company currently has its offices in New York City.

Lovett says that the tvg’s U.S. and UK businesses separated relatively recently. “In terms of the coordination effort, I, I felt like tvg needed to find better ways to keep itself in good shape in order to grow. So, we made a decision about 2 years or 18 months ago to separate the UK from the US business, and now tvg is US focused…Running a multinational operation had challenges that weren’t necessarily that constructive.”

Pacific Electric now has a full slate of bookings that includes Norah Jones on May 10, twelve nights of hosting comedy as part of “The Netflix Is A Joke” festival, Kinky, Camera Obscura, Pomplamoose and the legendary Kim Gordon.

Before finally getting home after what seems an exhausting period in his life, Lovett is finally coming home to see his family. Just before he walks in the door, he reveals what may be the key ingredient to Pacific Electric and all the tvg properties’ success: “I’m, immensely passionate about hospitality,” he says. “I love when people come over to our home and we cook dinner and we put food out. I really care about that.”